Nowadays, job satisfaction is one of the successful key for managers in any organization. It seems that there is a relationship between job satisfaction and employee productivity. In my literature review below, I will mention some related theory and my opinion about this association.
2. History
a. Some related key concept:
Job satisfaction has been defined as a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job; an affective reaction to one’s job; and an attitude towards one’s job. Weiss (2002) has argued that job satisfaction is an attitude but points out that researchers should clearly distinguish the objects of cognitive evaluation which are affect emotion, beliefs and behaviors. It means that if people want to increase job satisfaction, they must take into account their feelings, their beliefs and also their behaviors.
Productivity: The organization’s output of products and services divided by its inputs.
b. Studies and theories
There are some studies and theories that study about job satisfaction and the relationship between job satisfaction and employee productivity such as Hawthorne studies, Taylorism, Edwin A. Locke’s Range of Affect Theory, Dispositional Theory or Two-Factor Theory. In my literature review, I just summarize the below theories:
Hawthorne studies:
This is one of the biggest introductions to the study of job satisfaction. This study is a series of experiments on worker productivity, begun in 1924 at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric Company in Illinois. The major part of this work involved four experimental and three control groups and there are five different “tests’ were conducted at all. Under the guidance of two Harvard professors, Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger, the Relay Assembly Test Room (RATR) studies lasted until 1933 which found the effects of various conditions (most notably illumination) on workers’ productivity. These studies clearly showed that new changes in work